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Monthly Archives: August 2016

I sing poems. I write them at the back of paper bags in airplanes, the ones where you’re supposed to vomit into. Perhaps where my poetry rightfully belongs. I sing poems. I write them all over brown envelopes, the ones where you’re supposed to insert graduate school requirements. Brown envelopes indeed have better purpose. I learnt, being outside graduate school for Philosophy and living my ordinary nine lives with it. I sing poems. I write them at midnight. I record them in the tiny bathrooms of cheap hotels. Acoustics was great but the here-and-now wasn’t. I have to whisper-sing because loud sex noise of undeserved neighbours is more important. I sing poems. I figure out the guitar chords in airports, sitting on floors, waiting for late flights. I sing poems and I sing them for one person. All these misadventures, all for one person. And that one person is not even myself. That is how you love.

I think salvation is that first breath after a cannonball into the deep ocean. Or light after a difficult power interruption. Or when mom comes home after a long night of being alone with a tv show that you don’t completely understand.

I think we all wait for that moment. And we all wait for it with a heavy heart. That is because we look forward to something other than what’s currently in our hands at the present moment. And that we do not know exactly what it is.

But we remain hopeful instead. Because something tells us that something is bound to happen and it’s going to be better than what is.

This is the very reason why that first breath after a cannonball into the deep ocean is salvation.

I have been thinking a lot lately. I have been feeling great. And I don’t necessarily try to get a hold of new things. I bought flowers, however. I am happy. There is a red lip stick that I like but I never got myself to the point of actually buying it. I am just at peace with what I do not own. Just a spectator of beautiful things.

I am in love with the music of Ryuichi Sakamoto. It is so beautiful that it makes me think how cruel can the world be even in the presence of this piece of beauty? At the very least, I think that if his music plays in the background, nobody can be unkind. Imagine, all of us doing ordinary things to A Flower is Not a Flower. Making the bed, stirring the coffee, folding the baby’s clothes. To Seven Samurai Ending Theme. Waiting for the ride home with strangers, standing under the sudden downpour, trying to stay awake in moving cars. To Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence. Drawing close next to the body of the one you love on daybreak, standing still before an approaching dog that yearns for your affection since the day began, re-reading a passage from your favorite book to remind you of who you are.

How great is an achievement when you inspire people to live, to live simply? With a heart that overflows with love for things that are seldom neglected for their ordinariness.

From my favorite, The Elegance of the Hedgehog:

“Those who feel inspired, as I do, by the greatness of small things will pursue them to the very heart of the inessential where, cloaked in everyday attire, this greatness will emerge from within a certain ordering of ordinary things and from the certainty that all is as it should be, the conviction that it is fine this way.”